Select Skills to Practice
Who can do this with default capabilities?
School Network Administrators, School Network Staff, School Administrators, School Staff, Teachers
Finding resources is a three-stage process—this page is for the first stage:
- Selecting skills to practice
- Choosing assignments
- Reviewing assignments
Planner Trial will temporarily save your work as you go, so if you make an unexpected departure from Planner Trial (for example, you accidentally close your browser), you will be given an opportunity to resume your work if you return to Planner Trial within one week:

Select Continue working on this plan
to resume your work or Discard and start a new plan
to delete the saved work and start over again.
-
In the sentence in the upper part of the page, select the subject area
and class/group or year
you are selecting resources for.

When you select class/group or year options
, a pop-up window will open where you can make your choices:

Once you have made your choices, select Apply at the bottom of the pop-up window to save them or Cancel to close the pop-up window without saving your changes.
Need to create or edit student groups? Select Manage Groups in the upper-right corner of the page. You will go to the Manage Groups page in either the Reading Dashboard or the Maths Dashboard, depending on what subject you chose
.
If you have selected multiple classes/groups or years (see above), the Manage Groups function will not be available.
-
After making your selections, you will see the placement level
. Based on Star assessment data and Renaissance Learning's student growth models, the placement level is an estimated answer to the question: "If the students in the class/group or year that I have selected were to take a Star assessment today, what would their median Scaled Score be?"

This estimation allows you to use Star's science (Star's proven validity and reliability) to have a very good sense of your students' achievement level as of today. The placement level is calculated using some of the students' recent tests and typical growth rates (for more information, select the on the right
).
The number in the slider
is the selected point in your learning strategy. Select the arrows to either side of it (or click on the learning strategy line itself) to raise or lower its value. As you do this, the following information will change:

Note: If you have chosen to make the resources available to all students in a year, the year will be set to the year you selected.
Tick the learning objectives (skills) that you want to use. In the example below, the teacher has chosen the second, third and fourth skill cards shown.

- Suggested skills have a "Suggested" indicator at the bottom
. (If you chose multiple classes/groups or years to make the resources available to, these indicators will not be shown.)
- Focus skills are marked
; these are the skills that are most critical for success at each year level.
Once selected, the skills are listed below the skill cards
. You can remove a skill by selecting the on the right
.
To see more information about a skill, such as the standard, select the at the bottom of the card
. You will see the skill information in a new window, with the skill details shown by default. Select one of the categories on the left to see domains and standards, subskills and prerequisite skills. (Some skills may not have subskills or prerequisites.)

Select Close to close the information window.
If you want to find specific skills to work with, select the above the skill cards
.

When you have finished choosing the skills to teach, select Continue
.
